More And More Infections In Europe Can Evade The Most Powerful Antibiotics

More and more infections in Europe are proving able to evade even the most powerful, last-resort antibiotics, posing an alarming threat to patient safety in the region, health officials said on Monday.  Releasing annual data on antibiotic resistant superbugs, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said bacterial infections resistant to carbapenems -- a major last-line class of antibiotics used to treat hospital-acquired superbugs -- are ever more common in the European Union.  "With a smaller number of effective antibiotics, we are gradually returning to the 'pre-antibiotic era' when bacterial diseases could not be treated and most patients would die from their infection," said Marc Sprenger, the ECDC's director.

The Stockholm-based ECDC also said it had for the first time collected data on resistance among infections caused by a bacteria called Klebsiella pneumoniae to a powerful but older antibiotic known as colistin -- and had found alarming signs.  "According to our data, resistance to colistin was observed in 5 percent of Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates for the EU overall," Sprenger said.

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common cause of pneumonia, urinary tract and bloodstream infections in hospital patients. If antibiotics are unable to treat them effectively, patients can face long, costly stays in hospital, and risk dying.  Colistin is a last-resort antibiotic developed several decades ago that has serious side-effects and limitations to its use, but has become essential for treating carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae infections...